CHAPTER II.
THE OUTBREAK
DURING the spring of 1857 the native society of Hindostan presented those remarkable
phenomena which, in an Asiatic community, are the infallible symptoms of an approaching convulsion. The atmosphere was alive with rumours, of the nature peculiar to India;—strange and inconsequent fragments of warning or prediction, which, with reverent credulity, are passed from mouth to mouth throughout a million homesteads.
No one can tell
whence the dim whisper first arose, or what it may portend; it is received as a voice from heaven, and sent forward on its course without comment
or
delay; for the Hindoo people, like the Greeks of ancient time, hold Rumour to be divine.
Some of
these unwritten oracles undoubtedly grew spontaneously from the talk of men, and were to be regarded merely as indications of the agitated and uneasy condition of the public mind; but, beyond all question, some secret influence was at work to
